---
title: Then Simon scratched his head and said, ‘I can’t understand it at all. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then Simon scratched his head and said, ‘I can’t understand it at all. Who acts: Simon, I. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The War of the Wolf and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The War of the Wolf and the Fox, sentence 61

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Then Simon scratched his head and said, ‘I can’t understand it at all.

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**Who acts:** Simon, I · **What happens:** scratch, say, not understand · **To what, where:** head, all · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The War of the Wolf and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Simon, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg7277:53:61
# text = Then Simon scratched his head and said, ‘I can’t understand it at all.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	Simon	Simon	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	scratched	scratch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	ca	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	understand	understand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	_
15	at	at	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scratch** | past | Simon | Simon's head |  |  | then |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Simon *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **not** **understand** | can | I | head |  | all |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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